The annual meeting provided an opportunity for attendees to share the latest findings from their IES-funded work, learn from one another, and discuss IES and U.S. Department of Education priorities and programs.

The theme of this year’s annual meeting was Making it Matter: Rigorous Research from Design to Dissemination and the agenda included scores of session that highlighted findings, products, methodological approaches, new projects, and dissemination and communication strategies. The meeting was organized by the two IES research centers—the National Center for Education Research and the National Center for Special Education Research—in collaboration with the three meeting co-chairs: Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, of the University of Delaware; Kathleen Lynne Lane, of the University of Kansas; and Grace Wardhana, CEO of Kiko Labs.

Attendees were active on Twitter, using the hashtag #IESPImtg. Several attendees took the opportunity to highlight why their research matters using a sign and a selfie stick. Below are some Twitter highlights of the 2016 PI meeting.

The School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey collects data on bullying by asking students ages 12–18 if they had been bullied at school during the school year. The percentage of students who reported being bullied at school during the school year decreased from 28 percent in 2005 to 21 percent in 2015. Similarly, the percentage of male students who reported being bullied at school decreased from 27 percent to 19 percent during the same time period. While the downward trend was not significant for female students, a smaller percentage reported being bullied in 2015 than in 2005 (29 vs. 23 percent). Additionally, the percentage of females who reported being bullied was higher than the percentage of males in most years that data were available (the exceptions were 2005 and 2009 when the percentages were not measurably different).

However, as you can see in the graph below, most of the decline—overall and for males and females—occurred between 2007 and 2013. For the past two years, the percentages have been relatively unchanged.

Percentage of students, ages 12–18, who reported being bullied at school during the school year: Selected years, 2005 through 2015

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 2005 through 2015. See Digest of Education Statistics 2016, table 230.40.

In 2015, higher percentages of Black students (25 percent) and White students (22 percent) reported being bullied in comparison to Hispanic students (17 percent). A greater percentage of students in 6th grade (31 percent) reported being bullied than students in grades 8–12, where reports of bullying ranged between 15 percent and 22 percent. No measurable differences were observed in the percentage of private and public school students who reported being bullied at school.

The frequency of bullying is another factor that is measured in the SCS. In 2015, about 67 percent of students who reported being bullied at school indicated that they were bullied once or twice in the school year. About one-third (33 percent) indicated that they were bullied at least once or twice a month, with 10 percent of these students reporting being bullied once or twice a week and 4 percent reporting they were bullied every day.

Additional data from the 2015 report can be found in the tables in the report. These tables contain additional information on bullying-related topics such as types of bullying, and fear and avoidance behaviors at school.

ERIC has recently added several new fields to our database that will make it easier for researchers to find relevant studies. These are changes we've been working on for a while and we are excited that they are finally live.

Below is an overview of the changes, but you can learn more about our new fields during a webinar on January 18, 2017 at 2 p.m. (ET)

New Links to IES

The first fields that we introduced were designed to connect ERIC users with additional relevant information available on the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) website. Because ERIC sits on a separate website, we found many ERIC users never visited the IES website and did not take advantage of the high-quality content that is available. So, we added several fields to help connect you to places of interest on the IES website. First, we added links from the ERIC website to each publication page on the IES website. These links will help you find related videos and companion products for IES reports, if they are available. Second, for any work funded by an IES grant, we added a link to the grant abstract. This provides information about the overall body of work funded by the grant and any accompanying publications. Lastly, the What Works Clearinghouse has recently redesigned its website, and one aspect of the redesign is that there are now study pages that provide detailed information on specific studies that the Clearinghouse has reviewed. ERIC is linking to these pages so that our users can benefit from the in-depth, user-friendly information provided by the Clearinghouse.

New “Identifiers”

The second set of new fields was designed to clean up the previous “identifiers” field and make them more useful for searchers.

The identifiers field was a hodgepodge of proper nouns that mainly contained information on laws, tests and measures, and geographic locations. We separated this into three new fields—laws, measures, and location. We also standardized the language that we used to make these a controlled vocabulary that users could filter on. This change will enable you to find all work done in Alabama or any work that used the National Assessment of Educational Progress (for example).

New Author Identification Numbers

The third new field adds links to author’s biosketch pages. It can get confusing when several authors have the same name, and when the same author can publishes under different names. For example, the same individual could publish under “John Young,” “John P. Young,” “J.P. Young,” and “Jack Young.” ERIC does not have the ability to determine if these are all the same people, but we were able to add hyperlinks to those authors that have an Orchid ID or a SciENcv page set up. If these numbers are available when we are indexing the record, we will be able to link to authors’ pages so that users can see the other work they have published. IES is encouraging grantees to use SciencCV, so we expect to see a large increase in the use of these fields.

If you have any questions about the new fields, please contact the ERIC help desk or join us for our webinar.

The special education research community has increasingly focused on how best to support students with disabilities in the transition from high school to postsecondary education or adult life.

Transition supports provided in schools for these youth can differ and, as a result, the outcomes for these students during and after high school can vary a great deal.[1] The National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) has funded several grants on the topic.

Some of these NCSER-funded studies have incorporated and evaluated new approaches to provide educators with concrete information about effective practices to promote positive transition outcomes during and after high school. Here is a brief update on a few promising programs and practices.

David Test, Tiana Povenmire-Kirk, Claudia Flowers, and their colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte recently completed a four-year study of the effects of a transition-planning service delivery system model on transition outcomes for students with disabilities. Communicating Interagency Relationships and Collaborative Linkages for Exceptional Students (CIRCLES) is a three-tier model of interagency collaboration among community, school, and IEP teams (see graphic).[2] The effect of CIRCLES was studied using a group-randomized controlled trial, the first rigorous evaluation of such an intervention. Results indicated many positive impacts of the program including increased collaboration among teams, and increased rates of self-determination, IEP participation, and academic performance for CIRCLE students as compared to students in the control group receiving business-as-usual supports for transition.[3] One year after exiting high school, No differences in post-school outcomes were observed for those in CIRCLES as compared to those in the control group. However, these data were obtained for fewer than half of the original sample. More research is to be done to determine the true impact of CIRCLES on post-school outcomes.

Mary Wagner and her team addressed questions about the impact of interventions for high school students with autism spectrum disorders using a quasi-experimental design and longitudinal data from several national datasets. Her team found that 2- or 4-year college enrollment rates were significantly higher among youth with autism who participated in transition planning and those who had a primary transition goal of college enrollment.[4] In addition, the results indicated that these enrollment rates were significantly higher among students with autism who were included in secondary school general education English, math, science, or social studies classes than their peers with ASDs who were not included in these classes.[5]

Erik Carter at Vanderbilt University and his research team undertook a four-year study to examine the effect of peer support and peer network strategies as alternatives to traditional paraprofessional-delivered support to assist adolescents with severe disabilities in the classroom. The research team examined the impact of these interventions and found significant increases in participating students’ progress on individual goals, peer interactions and social relationships, social and academic engagement, and community participation compared to those receiving traditional paraprofessional support.[6] Previous research on transition interventions of this kind helped to identify evidence-based practices but this study was the first to rigorously evaluate them. Peers in the classroom can play a unique and valuable role in the welfare of adolescents with severe disabilities, and paraprofessionals and special educators can serve in a different role as facilitators of the peer support provided in these interventions.

Sarah Geenen, Laurie Powers, and their team at Portland State University conducted a longitudinal, experimental study to assess the efficacy of a supplemental transition program designed for youth in high school who are in both special education and foster care. Foster care students, they note, are disproportionately more likely to receive special education services than non-foster care students. The results were compelling, with meaningful and positive effects on youth participants, with lower rates of involvement in the juvenile justice system and increased independent living preparation and skills as compared to non-participants.[7]

Human interaction in society depends upon language and communication and the Institute of Education Sciences is one of several federal agencies that supports research and development (R&D) activities to further our knowledge in this area.

However, so far, there has been no systematic accounting or description of the range of language and communication R & D that the Federal Government supports.To address this gap, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) convened the Federal Government’s Interagency Working Group on Language and Communication. Led by co-chairs from the Department of Education and the Department of Defense, representatives from 13 different federal agencies developed a report of current and recent federal investments in language and communication R & D activities.

This investment is discussed across four broad areas:

Knowledge and Processes Underlying Language and Communication;

Language and Communication Abilities and Skills;

Using Language and Communication; and

Language and Communication Technologies.

In addition, the report describes the types of current R & D activities in these areas, and provides programmatic recommendations for key areas of investment and collaboration in language and communication research going forward.

On behalf of the working group, IES is gathering information from a wide community interested in language and communication R & D through a recently released request for information (RFI). The purpose of this RFI is to assist the working group in its efforts to further improve coordination and collaboration of R & D agendas related to language and communication across the Federal Government. If you are interested in submitting a response to the RFI, please do so by the deadline of December 30, 2016.

Written by Elizabeth Albro, Associate Commissioner of Teaching and Learning, National Center for Education Research